11. The vanished Nazca civilization

The people of Nazca became famous because of huge drawings made on the surface of the Nazca Desert in Peru. There were theories of their alien origins until scientists determined the Nazca people used these geoglyphs to communicate with gods by moving along the lines.

The vanishing of their civilization had been no less mysterious until recently. Cambridge University researchers proved that it was defeated by a drought caused by deforestation.

10. The underground secret of the Easter Island heads

We should thank the legendary Thor Heyerdahl for unraveling the secrets of Easter Island and its stone idols. He was the one to launch an expedition to explore the island.

He was also the first to carry out excavations at the site, learning that the Moai heads actually have bodies, some of them reaching 20 feet in height. Yet the greatest discovery was his experiment that proved the statues could really be made with the tools believed to have been popular among the people of that time.

9. The whale graveyard in Chile

An enormous whale graveyard was found in the middle of the Atacama Desert in Chile. Scientists couldn’t understand what might have caused such a mass suicide of whales until it was found that the remains belong to different time periods, the first of which occurred about 20,000 years ago. The death of the sea giants was caused by the flowering of toxic algae.